Current photographic technology entails composite film and paper structures comprising a support and a layer containing photosensitive silver halide crystals which are exposed to actinic radiation and processed by contacting with processing solutions whereby a visible image is formed within said layer. During said processing some of the silver halide crystals are removed from these layers by dissolution (fixation) and reside in the bulk processing solutions used in the contact fixation process. Such seasoned fixation solutions constitute liquid, heavy-metal waste. Novel methods of imaging in such materials, such as the heat image separation system described in U.S. Application Ser. No. 07/804,868 of Willis and Texter filed Dec. 6, 1991, eliminate such fixation and other heavy metal waste (such as that from bleaching of silver images) by separating the dye images from the silver images, using diffusion transfer processes and special dye receiving layers. The essential morphology of such an imaging system essentially consists of a conventional multilayer photographic element coated on a polymeric receiver element. Images are created by conventional radiation sensitivities in the silver halide emulsion containing layers, and these images are amplified using conventional aqueous color development processes. After a given development time, the development is stopped with an appropriate stop bath, and thereafter the element is dried. No fixing or bleaching chemistry is invoked in this process. After the elements have been dried, they are subjected to heating, in order to drive the image dyes to the receiver layer. After such image transfer, the donor layers are removed and recycled, to recover silver and valuable fine organic compounds, and the receiver/base combination is retained as the final print material.